Far beyond the requirements of voice communications, the rapid growth in wireless distribution of music, video, applications, images, news, and entertainment has driven service providers to address network capacity. In an indoor environment, or outdoors with significant multipath, the received signal can arrive via many paths and angles, and bluffs, the signal and gain may not be concentrated in one beam. In a network where mobile terminals receive multiple baseband signal station signals simultaneously, the interference from adjacent cells can become the dominant performance limiting factor. Since wireless adapters and handsets within a cell share the downlink channel, service providers must continue to invest in enhancing their infrastructure. However consumer product grade handsets and wireless adapters are sometimes considered disposable or have relatively shorter useful life, due to battery life or the advent of fashionable killer applications and features.
Significant handsets and wireless adapter design effort is invested into support for latest generation standards, improving battery life, enriching the multimedia experience, and providing additional services such as location. Between generational design cycles, a significant gain in network capacity can be achieved from adoption of high-performance wireless adapters using an adaptive phased array antenna device to suppress noise and interference and increase gain without substantially redesigning the receivers, their firmware, or protocols.
Thus, it can be appreciated that what is needed is an apparatus to achieve higher downlink throughputs and reduced download times, increased sensitivity, more uniform coverage, to increase network capacity, without requiring green field redesign of wireless infrastructure, adapters, and handsets.